GREY ROOTS ARCHIVAL COLLECTION
In 1950, Marissa Scott (left) was one of the first black
women to graduate from a Canadian nursing school.2016) with a doctorate
are 3.5 times more likely
to be unemployed than
non-immigrants with the
same level of education.”
Black immigrant
labour is more welcome
in dangerous settings,
like airports, garbage dis-
posal and construction.
We have a Temporary
Foreign Worker Program
through which Black and
Latin American workers
from the Caribbean toil
in extremely unsafe con-
ditions on Canadian farms. These
workers put in 12- to 14-hour work-
days, operate heavy machinery, work
from heights, handle pesticides and
often live in substandard housing.
Immigrant farm workers enjoy few of
the benefits Canadian workers do and
are routinely sent back to their coun-
tries of origin if they are injured on the
job. We’ve done so much to facilitate
white people’s access to this country,
but Black people’s desire to enter and
to stay is constantly under high scru-
tiny and regulation.while haitians were the largest single
group of nationals crossing into Canada
in 2017, many continental Africans
were also risking everything to cross
the border. Nigerians, for example,
filed more claims than any group other
than Haitians. On Christmas Eve 2016,two Ghanaians, Seidu Mohammed
and Razak Iyal, crossed on foot into
Manitoba from North Dakota. The two
men wandered through frozen farm-
lands and became disoriented in the
cold. A truck driver who saw Iyal and
Mohammed on the highway stopped
to help them and called 911. Moham-
med, a 24-year-old soccer star who left
Ghana fearing for his life as a bisexual,
lost all of the fingers and thumbs on
both of his hands. Iyal, 35, who worked
as a barber in Ghana, lost all of his fin-
gers and one of his toes. Canada even-
tually granted both men refugee status.
Many Canadians expressed sympa-
thy for the men and offered to help,
but Greg Janzen, a local reeve near the
Manitoba border crossing, gave a dif-
ferent account. “They’re criminals,”
he said. “If they’re willing to jump the
border at night and basically breakrd.ca 99